The fundamental work enabled a comprehensive examination of the structural and dynamic changes in VO2 as the lattice transforms from an insulator to a metal, and quantitatively established that the transition is driven by the large entropy of low-energy phonons in the metal, rather than by strong electronic correlations as commonly assumed. More broadly, this insight into how atomic vibrations control properties in transition-metal oxides is needed to predictively improve the performance of many other functional materials, including colossal magnetoresistors, superconductors and ferroelectrics.
J. D. Budai, J. Hong, M. E. Manley, E. D. Specht, C. W. Li, J. Z. Tischler, D. L. Abernathy, A. H. Said, B. M. Leu, L. A. Boatner, R. J. McQueeney, and O. Delaire, “Metallization of vanadium dioxide driven by large phonon entropy,” Nature (2014). doi:10.1038/nature13865
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